


Peppermint

by tea_for_lupin



Series: The Herball [8]
Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: 00Q - Freeform, M/M, Peppermint, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-10 18:11:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1162899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tea_for_lupin/pseuds/tea_for_lupin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q drinks the tea. After the burn, the taste of ice-blue eyes, cooling, sardonic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peppermint

Sometimes instead of Earl Grey, Q takes the peppermint tin. Cracks it open, breathes it in. The leaves are curled, and green, and drab. Water frees, unfurls and sinks them: they catch, lovely, in the late light—sun, strained twice. Through window and pot. Brew turns golden, and the stainless steel lid burns his fingers. Always something left behind.

Q wishes this were clear as code, the hidden beating force beneath the streets, behind the sky. And him with fingers on the keyboard, on the wrist, distal; Bond's voice in his ear. Proximal as satellites can provide. 

Instead: chaos and chlorophyll, a stray leaf in the cup. Q drinks the tea. After the burn, the taste of ice-blue eyes, cooling, sardonic. And once there was that mouth, all smoke and edges: something to feel. Even when it's no longer there.

This taste. Product of runners and tendrils, unrelenting as roots: binding, non-binary. There are words Q won't say, can't even think them: love too red and rounded a cage, against that body as bare as a blade. He closes the tin, rinses the cup. Walks away with the peppermint long on his lips.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Jude (justmarymorstanning) for looking a draft of this over for me <3


End file.
